He saw Cullen and Walters talking to the cop. As he watched and waited, he thought about his M-14, beautifully oiled and ready for tomorrow night’s job. He was looking forward to that. It had a touch of class, much more than these rough-and-ready hits on the freeway. He missed the M-14 more than he could have believed possible. He could almost imagine holding it in his hands, and squinting down that sight, and then sque-e-ezing that trigger.
They’d told him that tomorrow night was the most important hit for months. They’d told him it was something special. He knew he would feel like being sexually purged afterwards. He wondered what it would be like to force a hand grenade up a young girl’s ass, with only the pin protruding, and then pull the pin out so that she was keeping the trigger in place by muscular contraction alone. To make love to a girl like that would be out of this world. It made him horny to think about it. He guessed the only problem would be to retrieve the grenade afterwards. Maybe he’d just leave it in there, and say, ‘Take it easy when you walk home.’
He gave two or three dry snorts at his own sense of humour.
It looked like Cullen and Walters had finished talking to the cop. They were climbing into that antique Lincoln of theirs now. T.F. started the Regal’s motor, and nosed out of University Avenue into Fairmount.
Just as he did so, the cop walked towards him with his hand raised. T.F. stopped, and glanced again towards the pale grey cardigan in case he needed to go for his automatic quickly. The cop came right up to the front of his car, and then turned his back on him.
For a moment, T.F. wondered what the hell was happening. Then, around the corner, came the first car in a funeral procession. Fifty cars, nose to tail, with their headlamps blazing in the four o’clock sunshine. A long black Cadillac hearse, followed by shiny black limousines, and then polished family sedans, and finally a few odd station wagons and beaten-up vans belonging to less affluent relatives.
The whole procession took ten minutes to pass, while T.F. sat stony-faced, his fingers drumming in spasmodic bursts and his temper rising fast. Whichever way Cullen and Walters had gone now, he’d lost them, and he was going to have to report that failure. He put on his mirror sunglasses, and scowled behind them until the cop turned, grinned and waved him on.
*
They heard the news on the car radio on their way back to Los Angeles. It was twilight now, purple and soft, and they were driving in a stream of red tail-lights. They both felt tired and disillusioned.
The radio report said: ‘—still searching for the truck which crushed and killed Father Leonard Zaparelli this morning, only seconds after Bishop Mulhaney had dropped him off on Sixteenth Street—’
John turned up the volume. ‘Zaparelli? Isn’t that the priest they were talking about this morning? The one who said Hilary Nestor Hunter had set up some lesbian blackmail pictures?’
Mel yawned. ‘I think so.’
The radio continued: ‘—his involvement in the women’s liberation controversy, police are “fairly satisfied” that his death was not the work of vengeful supporters of Hilary Nestor Hunter. Ms Hunter said today she was “shocked and grieved” to hear of Father Leonard’s death, and added that she was all the sorrier because she had not had the time to prove her innocence to him.’
‘That would have taken the rest of his life in any case,’ put in Mel. ‘She’s about as innocent as John Wilkes Booth.’
The radio said: ‘—his close friend Perri Shaw maintained this evening that Father Leonard’s death was not accidental, even though it was inexplicable. She said she had “a good idea” who had done it, and she wasn’t going to rest until she brought the crusading priest’s killers to justice.’
The news went on to talk about cooler weather and the possibility of storms. Across the northern states of America, snow was already falling heavily, and forecasters were predicting an unusually bitter winter.
‘I wonder what Professor Sweetman’s predicting, down there in San Diego?’ John said.
Mel grunted. ‘The same, if you ask me. An unusually bitter winter.’
Thirteen
Dana Seiden was waiting for her husband that evening as his limousine swept up the drive of his Italian-style house on Siena Way in Bel-Air. She was posing at the top of the marble steps that led to the front door, wearing a golden evening gown that was cut so low that it looked as if it was going to drop off her at any moment, her platinum blonde hair brushed back from her face and tied in a golden ribbon. Beside her, their shaggy Afghan hound Cecil was posing with equal hauteur.
The two bodyguards climbed out of the car first and glanced quickly around the front of the house. One of them said, ‘Okay, Mr Seiden,’ and Anthony followed them. He looked tired, and he wore a tweed jacket slung over his shoulders because he was beginning to feel the cold.
Dana held out her hand. ‘Darling,’ she said in her throaty voice. ‘I was beginning to worry.’
He came up the steps and kissed her. The kiss was a little uncertain, because he still wasn’t used to having her back. ‘It took a long time to select the right take,’ he told her. ‘But we’ve got it licked now. Did you get Franco to light the fire?’
‘Two fires. One in the living room, and one in the hall. Would you like a tequila?’
‘I think I’d like a bath first.’
He lay back in the tub in their Italianate bathroom with its genuine Venetian tiles and its Sienese floor, letting the tensions of the day soak out of him. Dana sat in a gold-painted chair beside him, drinking a martini and smoking a pink cigarette. For a long time, they looked at each other and said nothing, two people who had become strangers and were going to need time and sensitivity to become friends again.
He guessed he had probably known when he married Dana that they weren’t right for each other. He was small, dark, energetic. He worked himself relentlessly, and he was known in the movie business as one of the most exacting of directors. He would shoot and re-shoot each take until his camera crews were screaming at each other, and the actors felt that they were going to spend the rest of their lives repeating this one scene. Dana, contrarily, believed that life was a golden opportunity to swim, sunbathe, go to parties, snort cocaine, dance, laugh, and flirt with as many young men as possible. She had married Anthony because he was intense, and because he was famous, and because there was something wonderfully martyred about him. He made movies that people respected, and she had never come across intellectual respect before. Unfortunately, once she’d savoured it, she realised it was founded on political dedication and hours of hard work in the studios, and that was boring. They had started to argue over the time he spent at the studio. Then they had started to argue over politics, and sex, and what colour to paint the conservatory. And most of all they had argued about the bodyguards, and their security restrictions, and everything about Anthony’s life that made Dana feel hemmed in. In a Bergmanesque scene, he had walked into the kitchen during one of her parties (nobody ever thought they were his parties) and found her with her half-brother Tad, a surfer. The palm of her hand had been filled with his semen. That was when they had pulled their marriage down around them, and screamed at each other, and separated.
She had stayed away for five months. Then, two days ago, he had arrived back at the house to find her sitting on the steps. All she said was, ‘Don’t ask me why.’ Soaking in the bath, Anthony said, ‘What did you do today?’
She smiled. ‘I just wandered around the house. I think the word for it is refamiliarisation.’
‘Did you think some more?’
‘About what?’
‘About us.’
She blew out cigarette smoke, and then stubbed the half-finished cigarette in a gold shell-shaped soap dish.
‘Of course. I don’t think I thought about very much else.’
‘And?’
She smiled again, and shook her head. ‘I guess I decided to play things the way they came. That was my problem the first time. I didn’t take you for what you were, and I di
dn’t play things the way they came.’
He settled back in the foam. ‘You were bored, most of all, weren’t you? You thought that living with a movie director was all parties and fun. Well, I guess it is with some movie directors, but it isn’t with me.’
‘I was younger then,’ she said. For some reason he couldn’t pin down, the way she said that implied some other meaning, apart from the obvious. For the first time since he had met her, he got the feeling that she was concealing something from him. In the early days of their marriage, she had always been so transparent. Now, he could sense that something else had entered her life. Her thoughts were orbiting around some other sun, apart from him.
He said, carefully, ‘Do you think you’re going to be happy this time? I haven’t changed much. I’ve just wrapped up a movie now, and I’ll have some free time. But there are going to be others.’
She said, ‘I’m going to be happy. I’m sure of it. Do you want me to scrub your back?’
He sat up in the tub. In her glittering gold evening dress, she knelt on the bathmat and soaped his back, slowly and caressingly. She massaged his neck and his shoulders with her soapy fingers, and then ran her hand down his spine. Her soft breasts, barely concealed in her thin-strapped gown, pressed against him. Her lips were slightly parted, and her brown eyes had taken on a dreamy, faraway look. She was probably high on Quaaludes, but he made himself stop thinking about that. She had come back, she had accepted him on his terms, and he was going to have to accept her on hers.
She kissed and licked his cheeks, his lips, his eyes. Her hands soaped his chest, pulling his nipple between finger and thumb. Then she stroked his stomach, and ran her fingertips down his sides. The crest of his hard and reddened penis rose from the foam, and at last she closed her fist around it.
As he lay back in the water, she slowly and teasingly pulled at him. He closed his eyes as the feeling between his legs began to tighten, and her hand stroked him faster. He thought of sexual fantasies, of being masturbated in front of an audience of naked girls, of being caressed during a business conference by a woman hidden under his desk. Dana began to croon to him, to whisper dirty words, and the bathwater splashed as she worked him quicker and harder.
At last, he felt a deep spasm, and he climaxed.
He floated for a while in the water, his eyes still closed. Then, gradually, he opened them. Dana was still kneeling beside the bath, and there was a curious smile on her face. He said, ‘You haven’t lost your touch. That was terrific.’
She kept on smiling, and it was only after a long time that he saw her smile had no humour in it at all, no love or empathy of any kind. He opened his eyes wide.
She was holding her palm upwards. She said, ‘What does this remind you of?’
*
They ate a silent dinner by candlelight in the gloomy Italian-style dining room. The servants came, and served their food, and left them alone. There was no sound except for the clatter and squeak of their knives and forks on their plates.
As they were sipping their coffee, Dana said, ‘I suppose you think I’m vengeful. I suppose you think I’ve come back to hurt you.’
Anthony lit a cigarette. ‘I don’t think that. I don’t know what to think. I don’t think you came back because you love me.’
She stirred her coffee, and set the spoon down in the saucer. ‘I don’t love you, not yet. I came back because I thought that I could. You’ll have to give me a chance.’
‘I’m prepared to.’
‘Then stop acting so silent and hurt. I didn’t mean what I said. What I’m trying to say is, I didn’t mean it vindictively. I just thought that we ought to face up, right now, to what happened between us. Try to catharsize it.’
Anthony sighed, breathing out smoke. ‘I’m going to have to take it more slowly than that, Dana. It was a tough marriage, and a hard separation, and I don’t expect it to get any better. Not for a while, anyway. It’s something we’re going to have to work at.’
‘Work, work, work,’ she said, in mock-exasperation. ‘That’s all you ever do. You work at making movies, you work at eating your dinner, you work at making love.’
He shrugged. ‘My father always told me that work was the practical side of prayer. A man is never closer to God than when he’s working, he used to say.’
‘I don’t want you to be close to God, Anthony,’ appealed Dana. ‘I want you to be close to me.’
He stood up, and walked across to the leaded window. Outside, the lawns of the house were floodlit in greenish light. It looked like a set for a Shakespearean play. Enter Malvolio, from the pasteboard bush on the right.
‘I sometimes wish we’d never met,’ Anthony said. ‘We seem to have about as much in common as the turtle and the hare.’
‘The turtle won the race,’ Dana reminded him. Anthony turned to her, and smiled regretfully. ‘Sure. But the hare had more fun.’
She stood up, and came over to him. She took his hand, and said, ‘You can have fun, too, you know. Turtles are allowed to. You’re going to have fun tomorrow, aren’t you, at Adele’s party?’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking forward to that. Adele Corliss is the only person who makes me feel that I don’t have to work so hard. I look at her, and I think, why worry about growing old? If I can look like that and act like that when I’m Adele’s age, then there’s plenty of time left to make all the movies I’ve ever dreamed of.’
Dana kissed his cheek. ‘Is that all you think of? Movies and politics?’
Anthony kissed her back, on the lips. Their kiss lingered for a moment, and she ran the tip of her tongue across his teeth.
‘I think of you,’ he said softly.
‘And movies, and politics.’
He gave a wry laugh. ‘I’m a political moviemaker. What else should I think about?’
She smiled, but didn’t answer. He said, ‘Anyway, tomorrow night’s going to be a political occasion as well as a social one. Did I tell you that Hilary Nestor Hunter’s going to be there, and Carl X. Chapman?’
Dana dropped her gaze. ‘That sounds like fun, of a weird kind.’
‘I thought you always had a sneaking admiration for Hilary Nestor Hunter. Or was that in the days when you got off on a woman’s domination? She’s a very powerful lady these days, so they tell me. The voice of the vociferous majority.’
‘I’m into meditation these days, and jai-alai,’ said Dana simply.
Anthony looked at her for a while. Her eyes reflected the swaying flames of the two candles in the table. ‘Why did you come back?’ he asked.
She was silent for a moment, and then she said quietly, ‘I came back because of love. Maybe not for love, but because of it.’
‘And do you really think we can make it? The turtle and the hare?’
‘I don’t know. But I’m trying, aren’t I?’
‘I guess so. I feel like a stranger with you, that’s all.’ She went across to the carved oak sideboard and opened a decorative silver box. Inside was Moroccan marijuana, and cigarette papers. She said, ‘Everybody starts off strangers. Everybody winds up strangers.’
He wasn’t at all sure what she meant, and he looked at her with a frown. There was a rap at the dining room door, and the Mexican servants came in to collect the coffee cups. Anthony wondered what it was that made him feel so uneasy. It was as if an earthquake were imminent, or an electric storm. Something unpleasant, even frightening.
*
That night, while he slept, breathing evenly through the small hours of the morning, she went into the bathroom, turned on the light, and closed the door behind her. She tiptoed naked across to the tall upright mirror in its decorative gilt frame, and looked at herself. Wide-shouldered, big-breasted, narrow-waisted. Her skin brown and glowing. Her hair long and blonde and straight.
She went close to the mirror, and stared into her own eyes. Then, slowly and lovingly, she kissed her image. Her left hand, almost absent-mindedly, rolled a nipple between her finger
s, until it rose stiff and crinkly and pink. Her right hand strayed down her body, and between her thighs. Her fingers probed inside her soft flesh, and she half-closed her eyes, and let out a long, almost silent sigh.
It didn’t take long. As her orgasm came closer, she pressed herself against the cool glass of the mirror, panting and shaking. Her face and her breasts were glossy with perspiration. Then she shuddered and shook, and sank to her knees, wincing.
Maybe Anthony wouldn’t have minded if he had seen her. After all, she had lain close to him and masturbated some nights when he was exhausted after sixteen hours in the studio. But he would have been shocked if he had heard her, because she whispered a name on her lips over and over, the way a woman whispers the name of a secret lover.
Fourteen
She came out of the double swing door of the mortuary, and he was standing in the corridor in a worn leather jacket and corduroy jeans, looking tired and unshaven under the yellowish fluorescent lights. It was a little past nine in the evening, and the building was echoing and empty, and smelled of formaldehyde.
She walked along the corridor towards him, and her heels went click-click-click on the green plastic tiles, that sound always reminded her of TV crime pictures, when the girl is being followed by the rapist through the dark streets of the city.
‘Ms Shaw? Ms Perri Shaw?’ he said as she approached. She stopped. She was wearing a dark grey dress that didn’t suit her, and her eyes were reddened. She said, ‘Yes? What do you want?’
‘They told me at the desk that you were here. My name’s John Cullen. I was wondering if I could talk to you for a while.’
‘What about?’
He glanced back down the corridor towards the double doors.
She licked her lips. ‘I’m not sure there’s anything to say,’ she told him. ‘I’ve already spoken to the television and the newspapers. And the police, of course. The police seem to think that I’m acting a little hysterical.’
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